Many computer networks, including the Internet, may establish connections between a source and a destination through one or more routers. These routers may operate according to one of a variety of protocols, most commonly Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP), Intermediate-System to Intermediate-System (ISIS), Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), or Routing Information Protocol (RIP).
On occasion, a router may fail, thereby causing a disruption in the flow of data between the source and the destination. While this connection may often be repaired as the failed router restarts, it nevertheless results in a delay of transmission of the data. Sometimes, it may even result in a loss of data. Current technology may provide for a seamless restart of a router if the outage of that router is announced. For example, during a planned outage of a BGP node (e.g., during a software upgrade), that node may announce its “restart” before the event occurs. Upon receiving this announcement, peer BGP nodes may plan for the outage by preserving outgoing data packets until a connection with the restarted node is reestablished.
Some network routers may have one active control plane and one inactive control plane. The active control plane may run different processes, including routing modules, such as BGP. When the active control plane fails unexpectedly, these processes can “fail over” to the inactive control plane. However, for example, according to the current BGP standard, all remote BGP peers of the failed control plane will lose their transmission control protocol (“TCP”) connection with the failed control plane, and detect that the BGP session is down. As a result, BGP routes must be re-computed, BGP routing updates must be generated, significant delay occurs, and data may be lost.